by Nick Kyme
‘They’re busy,’ said Karras, ‘but we’ll need to find another way through.’
‘Send me in, Scholar,’ said Voss from the rear. ‘I’ll turn them all into cooked meat before they even realise they’re under attack. Ghost can back me up.’
‘On your order, Scholar,’ said Zeed eagerly.
Ghost. That was Siefer Zeed. With his helmet off, it was easy to see how he’d come by the name. Like Karras, and like all brothers of their respective Chapters, Zeed was the victim of a failed melanochromic implant, a slight mutation in his ancient and otherwise worthy geneseed. The skin of both he and the kill-team leader was as white as porcelain. But, whereas Karras bore the blood-red eyes and chalk-white hair of the true albino, Zeed’s eyes were black as coals, and his hair no less dark.
‘Negative,’ said Karras. ‘We’ll find another way through.’
He pushed his astral-self further into the chamber, desperate to find a means that didn’t involve alerting the foe, but there seemed little choice. Only when he turned his awareness upwards did he see what he was looking for.
‘There’s a walkway near the ceiling,’ he reported. ‘It looks frail, rusting badly, but if we cross it one at a time, it should hold.’ A sharp, icy voice on the comm-link interrupted him. ‘Talon Alpha, get ready to receive those schematics. Transmitting now.’
Karras willed his consciousness back into his body, and his glowing third eye sealed itself, leaving only the barest trace of a scar. Using conventional sight, he consulted his helmet’s heads-up display and watched the last few percent of the schematics file being downloaded. When it was finished, he called it up with a thought, and the helmet projected it as a shimmering green image cast directly onto his left retina.
The others, he knew, were seeing the same thing.
‘According to these plans,’ he told them, ‘there’s an access ladder set into the wall near the second junction we passed. We’ll backtrack to it. The corridor above this one will give us access to the walkway.’
‘If it’s still there,’ said Solarion. ‘The orks may have removed it.’
‘And backtracking will cost us time,’ grumbled Voss. ‘Less time than a firefight would cost us,’ countered Rauth. His hard, gravelly tones were made even harder by the slight distortion on the comm-link. ‘There’s a time and place for that kind of killing, but it isn’t now.’
‘Watcher’s right,’ said Zeed reluctantly. It was rare for he and Rauth to agree.
‘I’ve told you before,’ warned Rauth. ‘Don’t call me that.’
‘Right or wrong,’ said Karras, ‘I’m not taking votes. I’ve made my call. Let’s move.’
KARRAS WAS THE last to cross the gantry above the ork feeding pit. The shadows up here were dense and, so far, the orks had noticed nothing, though there had been a few moments when it looked as if the aging iron were about to collapse, particularly beneath the tremendous weight of Voss with his heavy flamer, high explosives, and back-mounted promethium supply.
Such was the weight of the Imperial Fist and his kit that Karras had decided to send him over first. Voss had made it across, but it was nothing short of a miracle that the orks below hadn’t noticed the rain of red flakes showering down on them.
Lucky we didn’t bring old Chyron after all, thought Karras.
The sixth member of Talon wouldn’t have made it out of the salvage bay. The corridors on this ship were too narrow for such a mighty Space Marine. Instead, Sigma had ordered the redoubtable Dreadnought, formerly of the Lamenters Chapter but now permanently attached to Talon, to remain behind on Redthorne’s ship, the Saint Nevarre. That had caused a few tense moments. Chyron had a vile temper.
Karras made his way, centimetre by centimetre, along the creaking metal grille, his silenced bolter fixed securely to the magnetic couplings on his right thigh plate, his force sword sheathed on his left hip. Over one massive shoulder was slung the cryo-case that Sigma had insisted he carry. Karras cursed it, but there was no way he could leave it behind. It added twenty kilogrammes to his already significant weight, but the case was absolutely critical to the mission. He had no choice.
Up ahead, he could see Rauth watching him, as ever, from the end of the gangway. What was the Exorcist thinking? Karras had no clue. He had never been able to read the mysterious Astartes. Rauth seemed to have no warp signature whatsoever. He simply didn’t register at all. Even his armour, even his bolter for Throne’s sake, resonated more than he did. And it was an anomaly that Rauth was singularly unwilling to discuss.
There was no love lost between them, Karras knew, and, for his part, he regretted that. He had made gestures, occasional overtures, but for whatever reason, they had been rebuffed every time. The Exorcist was unreachable, distant, remote, and it seemed he planned to stay that way.
As Karras took his next step, the cryo-case suddenly swung forward on its strap, shifting his centre of gravity and threatening to unbalance him. He compensated swiftly, but the effort caused the gangway to creak and a piece of rusted metal snapped off, spinning away under him.
He froze, praying that the orks wouldn’t notice. But one did.
It was at the edge of the pit, poking a fat squig with its barbed pole, when the metal fragment struck its head. The ork immediately stopped what it was doing and scanned the shadows above it, squinting suspiciously up towards the unlit recesses of the high ceiling.
Karras stared back, willing it to turn away. Reading minds and controlling minds, however, were two very different things. The latter was a power beyond his gifts. Ultimately, it wasn’t Karras’s will that turned the ork from its scrutiny. It was the nature of the greenskin species.
The other orks around it, impatient to feed, began grabbing at the barbed pole. One managed to snatch it, and the gazing ork suddenly found himself robbed of his chance to feed. He launched himself into a violent frenzy, lashing out at the pole-thief and those nearby. That was when the orks behind him surged forward, and pushed him into the squig pit.
Karras saw the squigs swarm on the hapless ork, sinking their long teeth into its flesh and tearing away great, bloody mouthfuls. The food chain had been turned on its head. The orks around the pit laughed and capered and struck at their dying fellow with their poles.
Karras didn’t stop to watch. He moved on carefully, cursing the black case that was now pressed tight to his side with one arm. He rejoined his team in the mouth of a tunnel on the far side of the gantry, and they moved off, pressing deeper into the ship. Solarion moved up front with Zeed. Voss stayed in the middle. Rauth and Karras brought up the rear.
‘They need to do some damned maintenance around here,’ Karras told Rauth in a wry tone.
The Exorcist said nothing.
BY COMPARING SIGMA’s schematics of The Pegasus with the features he saw as he moved through it, it soon became clear to Karras that the orks had done very little to alter the interior of the ship beyond covering its walls in badly rendered glyphs, defecating wherever they pleased, leaving dead bodies to rot where they fell, and generally making the place unfit for habitation by anything save their own wretched kind. Masses of quivering fungi had sprouted from broken water pipes. Frayed electrical cables sparked and hissed at anyone who walked by. And there were so many bones strewn about that some sections almost looked like mass graves.
The Deathwatch members made a number of kills, or rather Solarion did, as they proceeded deeper into the ship’s belly. Most of these were gretchin sent out on some errand or other by their slavemasters. The Ultramarine silently executed them wherever he found them and stuffed the small corpses under pipes or in dark alcoves. Only twice did the kill-team encounter parties of ork warriors, and both times, the greenskins announced themselves well in advance with their loud grunting and jabbering. Karras could tell that Voss and Zeed were both itching to engage, but stealth was still paramount. Instead, he, Rauth and Solarion eliminated the foe, loading powerful hellfire rounds into their silenced bolters to ensure quick, quiet one-shot kills.
‘I’ve reached Waypoint Adrius,’ Solarion soon reported from up ahead. ‘No xenos contacts.’
‘Okay, move in and secure,’ Karras ordered. ‘Check your corners and exits.’
The kill-team hurried forward, emerging from the blackness of the corridor into a towering square shaft. It was hundreds of metres high, its metal walls stained with age and rust and all kinds of spillage. Thick pipes ran across the walls at all angles, many of them venting steam or dripping icy coolant. There were broken staircases and rusting gantries at regular intervals, each of which led to gaping doorways. And, in the middle of the left-side wall, an open elevator shaft ran almost to the top.
It was here that Talon would be forced to split up. From this chamber, they could access any level in the ship. Voss and Zeed would go down via a metal stairway, the others would go up.
‘Good luck using that,’ said Voss, nodding towards the elevator cage. It was clearly of ork construction, a mishmash of metal bits bolted together. It had a blood-stained steel floor, a folding, lattice-work gate and a large lever which could be pushed forward for up, or pulled backwards for down.
There was no sign of what had happened to the original elevator.
Karras scowled under his helmet as he looked at it and cross-referenced what he saw against his schematics.
‘We’ll have to take it as high as it will go,’ he told Rauth and Solarion. He pointed up towards the far ceiling. ‘That landing at the top; that is where we are going. From there we can access the corridor to the bridge. Ghost, Omni, you have your own objectives.’ He checked the mission chrono in the corner of his visor. ‘Forty-three minutes,’ he told them. ‘Avoid confrontation if you can. And stay in contact.’
‘Understood, Scholar,’ said Voss.
Karras frowned. He could sense the Imperial Fist’s hunger for battle. It had been there since the moment they’d set foot on this mechanical abomination. Like most Imperial Fists, once Voss was in a fight, he tended to stay there until the foe was dead. He could be stubborn to the point of idiocy, but there was no denying his versatility. Weapons, vehicles, demolitions… Voss could do it all.
‘Ghost,’ said Karras. ‘Make sure he gets back here on schedule.’
‘If I have to knock him out and drag him back myself,’ said Zeed.
‘You can try,’ Voss snorted, grinning under his helmet. He and the Raven Guard had enjoyed a good rapport since the moment they had met. Karras occasionally envied them that.
‘Go,’ he told them, and they moved off, disappearing down a stairwell on the right, their footsteps vibrating the grille under Karras’s feet.
‘Then there were three,’ said Solarion.
‘With the Emperor’s blessing,’ said Karras, ‘that’s all we’ll need.’ He strode over to the elevator, pulled the lattice-work gate aside, and got in. As the others joined him, he added, ‘If either of you know a Mechanicus prayer, now would be a good time. Rauth, take us up.’
The Exorcist pushed the control lever forward, and it gave a harsh, metallic screech. A winch high above them began turning. Slowly at first, then with increasing speed, the lower levels dropped away beneath them. Pipes and landings flashed by, then the counterweight whistled past. The floor of the cage creaked and groaned under their feet as it carried them higher and higher. Disconcerting sounds issued from the cable and the assembly at the top, but the ride was short, lasting barely a minute, for which Karras thanked the Emperor.
When they were almost at the top of the shaft, Rauth eased the control lever backwards and the elevator slowed, issuing the same high-pitched complaint with which it had started.
Karras heard Solarion cursing.
‘Problem, brother?’ he asked.
‘We’ll be lucky if the whole damned ship doesn’t know we’re here by now,’ spat the Ultramarine. ‘Accursed piece of ork junk.’ The elevator ground to a halt at the level of the topmost landing, and Solarion almost tore the lattice-work gate from its fixings as he wrenched it aside. Stepping out, he took point again automatically.
The rickety steel landing led off in two directions. To the left, it led to a trio of dimly lit corridor entrances. To the right, it led towards a steep metal staircase in a severe state of disrepair.
Karras consulted his schematics.
‘Now for the bad news,’ he said.
The others eyed the stair grimly.
‘It won’t hold us,’ said Rauth. ‘Not together.’
Some of the metal steps had rusted away completely leaving gaps of up to a metre. Others were bent and twisted, torn halfway free of their bolts as if something heavy had landed hard on them.
‘So we spread out,’ said Karras. ‘Stay close to the wall. Put as little pressure on each step as we can. We don’t have time to debate it.’
They moved off, Solarion in front, Karras in the middle, Rauth at the rear. Karras watched his point-man carefully, noting exactly where he placed each foot. The Ultramarine moved with a certainty and fluidity that few could match. Had he registered more of a warp signature than he did, Karras might even have suspected some kind of extra-sensory perception, but, in fact, it was simply the superior training of the Master Scout, Telion.
Halfway up the stair, however, Solarion suddenly held up his hand and hissed, ‘Hold!’
Rauth and Karras froze at once. The stairway creaked gently under them.
‘Xenos, direct front. Twenty metres. Three big ones.’
Neither Karras nor Rauth could see them. The steep angle of the stair prevented it.
‘Can you deal with them?’ asked Karras.
‘Not alone,’ said Solarion. ‘One is standing in a doorway. I don’t have clear line of fire on him. It could go either way. If he charges, fine. But he may raise the alarm as soon as I drop the others. Better the three of us take them out at once, if you think you can move up quietly.’
The challenge in Solarion’s words, not to mention his tone, could hardly be missed. Karras lifted a foot and placed it gently on the next step up. Slowly, he put his weight on it. There was a harsh grating sound.
‘I said quietly,’ hissed Solarion.
‘I heard you, damn it,’ Karras snapped back. Silently, he cursed the cryo-case strapped over his shoulder. Its extra weight and shifting centre of gravity was hampering him, as it had on the gantry above the squig pit, but what could he do?
‘Rauth,’ he said. ‘Move past me. Don’t touch this step. Place yourself on Solarion’s left. Try to get an angle on the ork in the doorway. Solarion, open fire on Rauth’s mark. You’ll have to handle the other two yourself.’
‘Confirmed,’ rumbled Rauth. Slowly, carefully, the Exorcist moved out from behind Karras and continued climbing as quietly as he could. Flakes of rust fell from the underside of the stair like red snow.
Rauth was just ahead of Karras, barely a metre out in front, when, as he put the weight down on his right foot, the step under it gave way with a sharp snap. Rauth plunged into open space, nothing below him but two hundred metres of freefall and a lethally hard landing.
Karras moved on instinct with a speed that bordered on supernatural. His gauntleted fist shot out, catching Rauth just in time, closing around the Exorcist’s left wrist with almost crushing force.
The orks turned their heads towards the sudden noise and stomped towards the top of the stairs, massive stubbers raised in front of them.
‘By Guilliman’s blood!’ raged Solarion.
He opened fire.
The first of the orks collapsed with its brainpan blown out.
Karras was struggling to haul Rauth back onto the stairway, but the metal under his own feet, forced to support the weight of both Astartes, began to scrape clear of its fixings.
‘Quickly, psyker,’ gasped Rauth, ‘or we’ll both die.’
‘Not a damned chance,’ Karras growled. With a monumental effort of strength, he heaved Rauth high enough that the Exorcist could grab the staircase and scramble back onto it.
As Rauth
got to his feet, he breathed, ‘Thank you, Karras… but you may live to regret saving me.’
Karras was scowling furiously under his helmet. ‘You may not think of me as your brother, but, at the very least, you are a member of my team. However, the next time you call me psyker with such disdain, you will be the one to regret it. Is that understood?’ Rauth glared at him for a second, then nodded once. ‘Fair words.’
Karras moved past him, stepping over the broad gap then stopping at Solarion’s side. On the landing ahead, he saw two ork bodies leaking copious amounts of fluid from severe head wounds.
As he looked at them, wailing alarms began to sound throughout the ship.
Solarion turned to face him. ‘I told Sigma he should have put me in charge,’ he hissed. ‘Damn it, Karras.’
‘Save it,’ Karras barked. His eyes flicked to the countdown on his heads-up display. Thirty-three minutes left. ‘They know we’re here. The killing starts in earnest now, but we can’t let them hold us up. Both of you follow me. Let’s move!’
Without another word, the three Astartes pounded across the upper landing and into the mouth of the corridor down which the third ork had vanished, desperate to reach their primary objective before the whole damned horde descended on them.
‘SO MUCH FOR keeping a low profile, eh, brother?’ said Zeed as he guarded Voss’s back.
A deafening, ululating wail had filled the air. Red lights began to rotate in their wall fixtures.
Voss grunted by way of response. He was concentrating hard on the task at hand. He crouched by the coolant valves of the ship’s massive plasma reactor, power source for the vessel’s gigantic main thrusters.
The noise in the reactor room was deafening even without the ork alarms, and none of the busy gretchin work crews had noticed the two Deathwatch members until it was too late. Zeed had hacked them limb from limb before they’d had a chance to scatter. Now that the alarm had been sounded, though, orks would be arming themselves and filling the corridors outside, each filthy alien desperate to claim a kill.
